March 28, 2023
How the Rain falls differently upon Māori
Earlier this month, Minister of Māori Development Willie Jackson announced a $15 million post-Cyclone Gabrielle Māori Relief Fund.
NewstalkZB host, Mike Hosking criticised the announcement as unjustified “special treatment race-based funding” saying that while extreme weather events impact geographic regions differently, the rain does not “fall differently on Māori” nor flooding inundate by “race.” Māori do not recover differently, use different recovery equipment, and homes are not yellow or red-stickered because you “identify as Māori.” Hosking concluded that the fund discriminates against non-Māori.
The Flood Risk for Māori Communities
The facts are that extreme weather events have higher impacts on Māori. Replying to Hosking, Minister Jackson argued that Māori poverty created by the “racist history” of Aotearoa renders Māori more vulnerable to extreme weather. More specifically, the Far North District Council (FNDC) outlines how colonisation forced Māori communities off traditional lands onto sub-optimal river and coastal floodplains with a higher risk of flooding, coastal erosion, storm surges and tidal inundations.
Modelling from Treasury supports this analysis showing the risk from cyclonic events on rain-prone river and coastal flood plains falls unequally on Māori and low-income households. Māori make up more than 21% of the population in these areas and earnings are 15% less than the median wage.
Other research shows that 80% of 800 across Aotearoa are situated on flood-prone low-lying coastal and river plains. Nearly 200 marae lie within one kilometre of the coastline and more marae are experiencing annual inundations of previously 1-in-100-year floods.
Regarding urban areas, Otago-based senior lecturer, Morgan Godfrey, has shown that in Napier, Cyclone Gabrielle has a greater impact on the city’s poorest large percentage-Māori low-lying suburbs than wealthier mainly Pākehā hilltop areas.
Impediments to Recovery
Māori also encounter greater difficulties in recovery. According to the FNDC, lower incomes in flood-prone Māori areas reduces their capacity to both prepare and recover from extreme events. With a higher percentage of Māori working in storm-vulnerable primary industries, any decline in existing low incomes exacerbates already difficult recoveries. Māori in isolated areas are also not well serviced by reticulated water or sewage systems, which creates prohibitive post-disaster challenges and costs.
Four post-Christchurch earthquake surveys by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority evidence greater post-disaster social impacts on Māori. Up to 63% of Māori experienced greater “stress, damaged or poor quality housing, loss of access to the natural environment, uncertainty, transport pressures, relationship problems, and potential or actual loss of income.”
Emerging evidence also suggests that post-disaster aid is trickledown, with Māori communities receiving less support and later than other communities. This was my experience operating a relief effort after the Christchurch earthquake. More help arrived and sooner in our middle-class suburb, than in the Aranui and East Christchurch high-percentage Māori areas we serviced.
Similar post-Cyclone Gabrielle stories are emerging that roads and power remain cut off for longer and relief arrives later in remote Northland and Coromandel Māori communities than in other areas.
And rather than the $15 million Māori Fund disadvantaging non-Māori, Māori will receive disproportionately less from the mainstream $55 million fund to farmers and growers, $25 million for businesses and $11.5 million for community groups.
Māori First Responders
Godfrey says that the Māori Relief Fund also recognises the role that Māori and marae play in civil defence disaster planning and as first responders.
Many Aotearoans are unaware of this long history. In 1886, survivors of the Tarawera eruption took shelter at Hinemihi marae and Whakarewarewa village. In 1931, Māori from Waimārama, Ōmahu and Pakipaki marae poured into Hastings after the Napier earthquake also wrecked much of the Hawkes Bay. Exhibiting less fear of aftershocks, they rescued many of their “Pākehā neighbours” and fed hundreds at their campsite on Queen St West. Police swore Māori in as special constables to prevent looting and a 200-strong Māori work gang demolished most of Hastings’ unsafe buildings.
More of us know the recent history, the Ngāi Tahu and Ngā Mātā Waka Urban Māori mobilisation supporting 10,000 families and hundreds of individuals during the Christchurch earthquakes, and Takahanga marae serving 10,000 meals to people of all cultures in the first week after the Kaikoura earthquake. There is also the contribution of Mataatua in the aftermath of the Whakaari volcanic eruption, and Waipareira Trust vaccinating thousands of Aucklanders during Covid, the vast majority non-Māori.
On to cyclones Hale and Gabrielle, and marae all over Northland and four marae in Auckland opened their doors to the whānau, aiga and families of all cultures. In the Bay of Plenty and East Coast, 27 of 44 emergency and welfare centres were marae.
Raining down
Hosking is an intelligent and articulate award-winning journalist. Few match the succinct polemics of his Mike’s Minute podcasts. He accepts that there are unique situations warranting Māori-purpose funding “like past grievances and Waitangi Tribunal processes.”
That is the problem. Hosking consigns Māori inequities to the remote past. Employing hyperbole rather than evidence, his easy convestibles feed the prejudice of a vociferous nest of racist Pākehā New Zealanders. The result is a twofold equal and opposite convenience denying the cumulative impact of a racist history on Māori while condemning initiatives rebalancing that history as reverse racism against non-Māori. The rain indeed falls differently on Māori.
Nāku noa, Dr Rawiri Taonui